Just Like Us

 “It’s taken us aback to see people who look like ‘normal people’ cross that line.” 

Deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism at the NYPD, John Miller, on a January 14th appearance on MSNBC 

The above quote was highlighted to me by a group of long-term friends, professionals and academics in Northern Florida, who are mostly Black. Oddly, they laughed it off… they were not remotely surprised. Normal White people? I was disgusted.  The Washington Post (January 15th) article my friends sent me noted: “ In the days following the insurrection, as footage has been inspected and suspects have been arrested, it's become soberingly clear that among the miscreants, enablers and criminals whose mob attack resulted in at least five deaths, there were military veterans, lawmakers, police officers — even an Olympic athlete. The very embodiment of what we’ve been taught to think of as ‘good guys.’

“‘The fact that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond nearly aggressively enough to credible warnings of the coming insurrection has prompted ‘difficult discussions’ within those agencies,’ Post reporters Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky wrote on Jan. 12, adding that those conversations center on ‘race, terrorism and whether investigators failed to register the degree of danger because the overwhelming majority of participants at the rally were White conservatives fiercely loyal to [President] Trump.’”

Whether this nascent insurrection continues immediately or surfaces initially sporadically before exploding again or sputters and dies, has yet to be seen. But figures no less prominent than the President of the United States, hordes of elected US Representatives, dozens of US Senators – led into vitriol by Yale and Harvard-educated (law schools) Senators like Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) – have legitimized the very conspiracy theory that triggered the violence and even the insurrectionists themselves. The above picture is of Josh Hawley on January 6th encouraging the mob as they approached the Capitol. Yale Law School Professor William N. Eskridge Jr. (who taught Hawley at Yale and Cruz at Harvard): “I taught Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz in law school. Clearly they didn't pay attention.” USA Today, January 13th. 

The rioters and insurrectionists, with this kind of support, really believe they are fighting to support the Constitution when they are doing exactly the opposite. How we respond to these traitorous criminals – masquerading under a false mantle of “patriotism” – will determine if this movement struggles and dies… or rises to define the future of America. The possibly direct complicity of Congress people and their staff is currently being investigated, as well as potential charges against so many pledged to uphold the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic: from police officers and soldiers to elected federal, state and municipal officials. Are these individuals the barriers that we face to discover the truth? If the President himself walks free from Senate conviction for his incitement and unwillingness to intervene to stop the January 6th Capitol mob we all witnessed on television – the “kill him with his own gun” and “Hang Mike Pence” insurrectionists sent to the capitol by the President at an angry pre-vote rally – think of the message that will send to the exceptionally well-armed right-wing zealots ready to kill… all over the United States. Does it sadden you to see the unbelievable siege-level of security in Washington, D.C. and around most state capitols?

That this rising violence is a bona fide insurrection aimed at overthrowing the US government is beyond question. If they reach critical mass, they succeed. Insurrectionists and anti-social distancing scofflaws feel that it is within their fundamental and individual right to interpret the Constitution and the law, even if their self-determined view contradicts every single judicial decision on point, whether by conservative or liberal courts. See my December 24th Toxic Individualism blog. If such negativists chastise a movement (which they mistakenly belief is a well-organized actual group) – Antifa – for its purported anarchist underpinnings, their attitudes and actions are hypocritically the stuff of definitional anarchy.

This initial violence is far more significant than most Americans believe. Is this our “American Spring”? Could this be the beginning of roiling violence that takes down the nation, as many seasoned US intelligence experts are warning us? And if that angry right-wing faction does not move now, do they truly believe that they are capitulating to a massive left-wing deep state conspiracy? Is it now or never for them? Was the January 6th violence our equivalent of the 1938 Nazi Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass”) as described by Republican and former California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck) on January 10th? As inconvenient as that comparison might be to many, there is enough truth in that allegation to scare those of us who care about maintaining a unified moral America.

“After ransacking the U.S. Capitol and threatening the lives of members of Congress on Jan. 6, they walked down the building’s broad steps unmolested and into the mythology of right-wing extremism. Many wore shirts identifying them as accolades of QAnon, riders in ‘the Storm’ who believe the fever-dream conspiracy that they are foot soldiers in a war against Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the government’s ‘deep state’ bureaucracy. There were also neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in the overwhelmingly white crowd, including a man wearing a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt. Racists rallied to the Confederate flag of rebellion that some of the insurrectionists waved in the halls of Congress.

“With President Trump only days away from an unceremonious departure from the White House, the vision of a mob desecrating the citadel of democracy felt for many observers like the end of a shameful period of norm breaking and tradition smashing. But for counterterrorism experts who have spent the two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks closely studying and fighting violent extremist groups overseas, the spectacle looked like something altogether different: the likely birthing of a violent American insurgency.

“Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal was formerly the head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of all U.S. and allied troops fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. “I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America,” McChrystal told Yahoo News.

“A radical group of citizens have adopted a very hardline view of the country, he noted, that echoes the Lost Cause narrative that took root in the old South after the Civil War. ‘Only President Trump has updated Lost Cause with his ‘Stop the Steal’ narrative that they lost because of a stolen election, and that is the only thing holding these people down and stopping them from assuming their rightful place in society,’ McChrystal said. ‘That gives them legitimacy to become even more radical. I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize.’”  Yahoo News, January 16th. See also my January 16th Domestic Terrorism blog.

No, this insurrection is not an “evangelical” Christian movement. Legions of good and deeply religious evangelicals are already struggling with new internal moral debates, even as many others back the insurrection. This appeared in the January 7th ChristianityToday.com: “Wednesday January 6 was the Feast of Epiphany, when Christians celebrate how the light of Christ spreads to all nations…  But what a strange Epiphany we had in the United States. Instead of Magi worshiping a newborn king, MAGA hats descended on our nation’s capital. Instead of the baptism of Christ announcing his true identity, men and women held signs proclaiming ‘JESUS SAVES’ as they demanded to overturn an election. Instead of a miraculous display of love at a wedding feast, we saw a display of political violence…

“The violence wrought by Trump supporters storming the Capitol is anti-epiphany. It is dark and based in untruth. The symbols of faith—Jesus’ name, cross, and message—have been co-opted to serve the cultish end of Trumpism.” Nor is this brutality a reflection of the entire Republican Party. The Lincoln Project Republicans are making their anti-Trump voices heard. There were ten brave GOP House members who voted for the impeachment. There are GOP Senators clearly ready to vote to convict the President. Are there enough? Not yet. 

There is even one ranking GOP Representative, a former prosecutor, who believes that the Department of Justice itself should expand its investigation “to include President Trump’s conduct during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol when members of Congress and others were reportedly pleading for him to deploy the National Guard and take other steps to quell the riot.

“‘I would go beyond the article filed by the Democrats and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi,’ Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said on the Yahoo News ‘Skullduggery’ podcast. ‘I’m interested in what actions were taken after the Capitol was breached. Once the president knew that the Capitol was under siege and really being invaded by domestic terrorists, what actions did the president specifically take to remedy what happened?... If it was al-Qaida attacking the Capitol, my God, I would think the president would pull out all the stops to ensure the National Guard was fully deployed and would stop this breach and this invasion of the Capitol.’” Yahoo News, January 15th. We have a choice – Republican, Democrat or Independent – to be loyal to the nation and its Constitution or to overthrow that system and replace it with a government predicated on White power. Pick one.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am scared, not so much for myself, but for my family, friends and the tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans who simply want back that peaceful, open, free and functioning (however awkwardly) America they once enjoyed.